At First Sight - Nicholas Sparks [112]
They grew fond of each other, and though both were struggling, they refused to allow Jeremy to wallow in self-pity. They allowed him time alone and assumed some of the responsibility of caring for Claire, but they also insisted that Jeremy do his share no matter how much he was hurting. And both of them continually reminded him that he was the father and that Claire was his responsibility. In this, they were united.
Bit by bit, Jeremy was forced to learn how to care for the baby, and as time passed, the grief began slowly to lift. Where once it had overwhelmed him from the time he woke until the time he collapsed in bed, now he found it possible to forget his anguish at times, simply because he was absorbed in the task of caring for his daughter. But Jeremy had been operating on autopilot then, and when the time came for his mother to leave, he panicked at the thought of being on his own. His mother went over everything half a dozen times; she reassured him that all he had to do was call if he had any questions. She reminded him that Doris was just around the corner and that he could always talk with the pediatrician if he felt worried about anything.
He remembered the calm way his mother had explained everything, but even so, he had begged her to stay for just a little while longer.
“I can’t,” she said. “And besides, I think you need to do this. She’s depending on you.”
On his first night alone with Claire, he checked on her more than a dozen times. She was in the bassinet beside his bed; on his end table was a flashlight that he used to make sure she was breathing. When she woke with cries, he fed and burped her; in the morning, he gave her a bath and panicked again when he saw her shivering. It took far more time to get her dressed than he thought it would. He laid her on a blanket in the living room and watched her as he sipped his coffee. He thought he would work when she went down for a nap, but he didn’t; he thought the same thing when she went down for a second nap, but again he ignored his work. In his first month, it was all he could do simply to keep his e-mail up-to-date.
As the weeks rolled into months, he eventually got the hang of it. His work was gradually organized around the changing of diapers, feeding, bathing, and doctor’s visits. He brought Claire in for shots and called the pediatrician when her leg was still swollen and red hours later. He buckled her in her car seat and brought her to the grocery store when he went shopping or to church. Before he knew it, Claire had begun to smile and laugh; she often stretched her fingers toward his face, and he found that he could spend hours watching her in the same way she watched him. He took hundreds of pictures of Claire, and he grabbed the video camera and recorded the moment when she let go of the end table and took her first steps.
Gradually, ever so gradually, birthdays and holidays came and went. As Claire grew, her personality became more distinct. As a toddler, she wore only pink, then blue, and now, at age four, purple. She loved to color but hated to paint. Her favorite raincoat had a Dora the Explorer patch on the sleeve, and she wore it even when the sun was shining. She could choose her own clothes, dress herself except for tying her shoes, and was able to recognize most of the letters in the alphabet. Her collection of Disney movie DVDs occupied most of the rack near the television, and after her bath, Jeremy would read her three or four stories before kneeling beside her as they said their prayers.
If there was joy in his life, there was tedium as well, and time itself played funny tricks. It seemed to vanish whenever he tried to leave the house—he was always ten minutes behind schedule—yet he could sit on the floor playing with Barbie or coloring in the Blue’s Clues notebook for what seemed like hours, only to realize that only eight or nine minutes had actually passed. There were times when